Here it comes again
Friday February 06th 2015, 10:44 pm
Filed under: Family,Life

We had the wettest December in history and then the driest January in history, as in, zero rain–my grass sprang up and grew just enough to look green and then froze in place as the top of the soil cracked apart as if it were summer. In this drought if you don’t feed us I don’t water you.

I woke up about 7:15 this morning to strong winds and leaves and limbs thrashing and an overcast but bright, deep yellow sky.

I’ve seen a sky like that–right before a tornado hit, ages and ages ago in a different place and it got me out of bed to go check the weather report, but no, as far as I can tell, it was simply the late dawn against the storm clouds and it faded to gray quickly.

There was an errand that had to be run today not tomorrow whether we wanted to hunker down or no, and so we were on the expressway at late rush hour clearly immediately after the tall eucalypus fell and blocked all southbound lanes. Shattered pieces were thrown across the divider and the northbound lanes where we were and beyond. A busy road–and yet there was no sign of any damaged car, just tree shrapnel. Everyone completely lucked out.

And I mean that, because coming from the other way there’s the crest of the hill and then there was that tree–with a 45 mph speed limit, there was no way to have seen it till drivers were right on it. Just past it, I was waiting at the light at the bottom of the hill while a rush of cars was coming back the wrong way in both lanes across the divider from me. People were doing crazy things, and meantime, the next group of cars was arriving facing them head-on at the light. One particularly panicked-looking woman reacted to my left-hand green arrow as if it were her right-turn green arrow–NO, honey, STOP.

I dropped Richard off a block away (if I had to be out and about he might as well work from work rather than home) and coming back there was already a cop with flashers on and the road coned off and the city’s tree workers were getting right to it. They had a big job there, and that one probably took immediate priority.

Tomorrow we get a ten-hour break in the middle of the day for the earth to inhale deeply of this rich essence of life-sustaining fluidity and then it starts coming at us again.

A good time to be thankful for a warm house to knit in.

I noticed a whole flock of finches not in the trees but in odd spots under what roofspaces we could offer them. Drier that way.


1 Comment so far
Leave a comment

That finch looks pretty soaked! I hope you stay dry, even as I hope California gets lots of gentle rain.

Comment by twinsetellen 02.08.15 @ 4:53 pm



Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)